“I Just Hope We Get Fair Treatment” -- That should have been the takeaway headline from Trump’s remarks this past Friday in Sioux Center, Iowa.

Instead, Trump’s remarks were presented to the American people as a possible threat.  According to many news outlets, the big orange monster issued a cryptic warning that there could be “big trouble” if the U.S. Supreme Court did not rule in his favor -- the inference being that the alleged “insurrectionist” was signaling his MAGA zombies to ready themselves for a fight.

Looking at his comments in context, Trump had just finished explaining that “radical left Democrat” judges seem to treat him more fairly than Republican judges:

“You know what I find, a Democrat judge appointed by, let’s say Obama … they say ‘we’re appointed that’s the end!’  [But]when you are a Republican judge appointed by, let’s say Trump, they go out of their way to hurt you so that they can show that they have been ‘fair.’  Fair, honorable people.  It’s an amazing difference.  I’ve never seen anything like it.”

He continued to say that he hoped the justices he had appointed to the court would be fair.

 Listeners like myself understood that he was concerned the Supreme Court might feel so pressured -- or worse yet intimidated -- that they would rule against him and against their better judgement.

“They say ‘Trump owns the Supreme Court … if they make a decision for him, it will be terrible!  It will ruin their reputations! … If they rule in his favor, it will be horrible for them, and we’ll protest at their houses and we’ll do (all of the things that you see.)’  And that puts pressure on people to do the wrong thing.”

Those remarks then led to his saying, “I just hope we get fair treatment, because if we don’t our country is in big, big trouble.”  In an instant, the quick-thinking former president added, “Does everyone understand what I’m saying?  Because they’ll cover that completely differently.  They’ll cover that in a much different manner.”

Of course, the last two sentences were left out of any coverage of his remarks.  His immediate prediction that his remark was going to be taken out of context was missing even at websites like Newsmax and The Hill.

Newsmax originally led with the headline, “Trump Warns of ‘Big Trouble’ If Supreme Court Backs Ballot Bans” -- complete with a photo of a red-faced, angry looking Trump pointing his finger threateningly.

TheHill.com (which AllSides.com rates as almost in solid leftie territory now), led with a similar headline, “Trump warns of ‘big trouble’ as Supreme Court agrees to hear Colorado ballot case.”

News sites across the web mimicked those “Trump warns of trouble” Barnum and Bailey headlines that hoped to get a collective sigh out of everyone as they lamented, “Oh no, he’s at it again.”

In my view, saying that we’re going to be “in trouble” as a country is different than “warning of big trouble.”  Of course, the former is saying that in this historically important case, if we lose the rule of law in the land’s highest court, we know the republic is doomed.  We all knew what Trump meant.  The latter implies that he himself is somehow threatening the country, which his haters find a way to conjure into a headline nearly every day.

I guarantee that my so-called conservative friends, (who swear by a steady diet of Fox News Channel), were shaking their heads in disgust.  You know the ones… they wince as they whine, “If he just wouldn’t say the things he does.”  The only trouble is, they don’t know what he really says because they only catch headlines and snippets the deceptive media feeds them.

And frankly, Trump’s comment wasn’t nearly as ominous and alarming as the fact that the attorneys general of 27 states really were warning about trouble.

The states filed an amicus brief arguing that if Trump wasn’t kept on the Colorado Republican presidential ballot, it would have national consequences.  They said that the Colorado state court’s ruling that Trump had engaged in an insurrection “threatens to throw the 2024 election into chaos.”

That was the real red flag for possible trouble ahead.  We don’t need more hyperbolic headlines about Trump to know that we are teetering on the verge of yet another watershed moment in our nation’s history.

Susan D. Harris can be reached at www.susandharris.com

Image: Screen shot from NTD video, via YouTube